Daily Archives: August 2, 2016

People have come forward to identify the man whom we believe uttered these words the day of the Black Lives Matter protest in downtown Portland:

“I Was There! I’m the reason why he pulled the gun.”

The gun to which he refers is the gun pulled by citizen journalist Mike Strickland in an attempt to stop an onslaught of people who were bearing down on him — even as he backed away in fear.

Image Credit: Multnomah County

Strickland spent several days in Multnomah County jail on $250,000 bail all because he pulled his weapon in self defense against thugs, anarchists and black bloc rabble. They were the ones who acted illegally and Strickland paid the price for legally defending himself.

Strickland will be back in a Portland courtroom on August 5th to face four charges — two of them felonies — for unholstering his weapon in self defense.

Another person just sent me an email with his name. A website commenter wrote his name in a comment. Two others from Facebook identified him.

Kerensa is an open source tech acolyte who, when he’s not sitting in front of computer screens, apparently rushes people he doesn’t like at protests.

Here is the man, identified by people as Benjamin Kerensa, bearing down on Mike Strickland as he tries to back away from the smaller group that broke off from the main BLM protest. This was in an apparent attempt to hurt him and keep him from filming. Watch the man believed to be Kerensa at the top right of this GIF.

Photo Credit: Screengrab/Oregonian/Periscope

This video has been out there for all to see on The Oregonian website. The paper stripped this video off periscope and youtube accounts of the incident. But it wasn’t until I heard from people who identified Ka

Kerensa and told me he was in this video that I was able to connect the dots. See the part I isolated at :17:

Notice that the very second he saw the man identified as Kerensa coming, he immediately tensed and pointed his gun in his direction.

Why? Because the “big guy” roughed up Mike just minutes before. Read about that part of it here.

Here it is in slo-mo:

Photo Credit: Screengrab/Oregonian

And they were all converging on him. As Mike told me:

“I’m watching the guys with masks with the sticks …they’re beelining for me…and they’ve got the sticks…and yelling, ‘Get the fuck out of here!!’ They keep coming at me screaming, ‘Get the fuck out of here!!’”

And then the man identified as Kerensa is seen moving around to come at Strickland perhaps from another direction:

Photo Credit: Screengrab/The Oregonian/YouTube

Here’s another angle which shows the man identified as Kerensa waiting on the sidewalk:

I’ve held this post in hopes of receiving a reply to the email I sent to Kerensa July 24th:

Hello Benjamin,

Based on photos from that day, I see that you were there when Mike Strickland pulled his gun at the BLM event recently in Portland.

I had some questions:

Where were you in relation to Strickland when he pulled his gun? What were you doing at the event? Have you gone to protests in Portland before? What’s your relationship with the protesters at the event that day? Did you file a police report that day? Had you seen Mike Strickland before that day? Were you in fear for your life? Did you exchange words with Strickland before he pulled his gun that day? Did you talk with Strickland after he pulled his gun? What did you think about the incident? Did you think he was within his rights of self defense to pull his gun? Did you hear anyone threaten him? Did you see anyone threaten him?

What were your general observations about that day?

Thank you so much for your help.

He hasn’t responded.

Strickland has a court date on August 5th. If the Multnomah County District Attorney’s Office doesn’t drop charges after all of the evidence showing Strickland moved in self defense, well, then the ‘rule of law’ isn’t really a ‘rule’ is it? In fact, it would be closer to a goal-line-moving enterprise solely dependent upon the political whims of whoever’s in charge.